PS: I also urge a bit of caution here, as it seems to me that the only thingthis thread is doing is making us sound even less scientific (and more likestamp collectors) to the gel jockeys (molecular biologists) and tree monkeys(cladists) out there ...

The synonymy I'm most concerned about is objective synonymy of species names(i.e., that which happens when we move a species from one genus to another).Bionomials have implicit meaning built in, or more correctly, we interpret thename as meaningful. If we relax that (e.g., are fine with Drosophilamelanogaster not actually being a Drosophila) then we'd stop generating a lot ofneedless synonyms.

Presumably objective generic synonymy only occurs if two generic names have thesame type species, in which case this would seem rather rare?

Regards

Rod

On 18 Jun 2012, at 23:48, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

I guess I'm arguing that overloading the names with meaning (i.e., expectingthem to tell us something about relationships) is the root cause of much (most?)synonymy, which in turn makes taxonomy difficult to use. Is it not time torethink this practice?<
Hold on, synonymy at the *species level* is for entirely different reasons!Also, some generic synonymy is objective synonymy (i.e., purely nomenclatural).These changes cannot be stopped ...
Stephen

I'm puzzled as to why keeping the name unchanged is only possible
with a computerised system, while changing names willy-nilly is the
best method without computers?!

First, your proposal is - despite your rebuttal - the same thing as
having a uninomial. If "Drosophila melanogaster" is an invariant text
string used for a taxon in the actual genus Sophophora, then the only
difference between that and the original proposals for uninomials is
that there is no hyphen.

Sure, but just so we're clear that I'm not advocating changing the way abinomial is written.

Second, my point is that if you disassociate the name that is used
for a taxon from the taxonomic hierarchy to which it belongs (which
is exactly what you are proposing, especially given that often the
original genus isn't even in the same family as the actual family -
e.g., many of Linnaeus' names), then you cannot possibly hope to
allow non-experts to know how any given taxon fits into the
classification without a functioning hyperlinked LSID system in place
- because otherwise EVERY non-expert will assume the "genus name"
they see in print is part of a classificatory hierarchy, since that's
how it has *always* worked. That's what I mean by "cultural inertia".
[Note also that this glosses over a major and horrific side-effect;
in order for your proposal to work, it would have to be retroactive
to all existing names, so the vast majority of species in existence
would suddenly find themselves with "resurrected" pseudo-genus names
- all the common butterflies would be Papilio again, the bees would
be Apis, the wasps would be Vespa, and so forth - it would be the
taxonomic equivalent of a zombie apocalypse! And, no, you couldn't
just pick an arbitrary cutoff date for when genus names would stop
being altered, because there is no consensus for the generic
placement of many existing taxa!]

If the genus part of a bionomial name is subject to change then how, exactly, doI work out where it fits in the classification? If, for example, I look at frognames in the literature over the last few decades, they are being bounced aroundall sorts of different genera. Anyone looking at this is going to struggle tofigure out what names are the same, never mind where they fit in any frogclassification. There's a big literature on phylogeny, development, ecology,disease, etc. that uses multiple names for the same thing. Why is this a goodthing?

Why does it have to be retroactive? Why not simply decide to change existingpractice and say from some date on lets leave names as they are? If there's noconsensus, lets just make a decision (or leave it to the first person who caresenough to tackle the group). In any event, at no point did I say let's rolleverything back and start again.

You can't just issue a worldwide memo saying "Oh, FYI, the genus
names used in printed scientific names are no longer used in
classification, effective immediately. - The Management". If you want
to make that radical a change to how names work, then you'd be forced
to publish everything online, and give people hyperlinked LSIDs so
they can click on a name and see its classification. That, or you'd
have to use TWO genus names from now on (plus subgenus where
applicable), so part of the name would reflect the classification,
and the other would reflect the original published combination. So,
e.g., the European paper wasp would become "Polistes (Polistes)
[Vespa] dominula dominula (Christ, 1791)". All that does is add
another level of unwieldiness.

Publishing everything online wouldn't actually be a bad thing, and it's prettyclearly where we are heading.

At no point am I suggesting we have to burden names further with their history.Just give me a name and stop mucking around with it.

Isn't the key separating names from relationships - relationships
being the task of phylogenetics.

Again, if names have always reflected relationships, suddenly
disassociating them will create chaos unless you have a convenient
workaround. If you can convince people that you have such a
workaround, maybe you can sell people on the idea - I just don't see
it happening any time soon. Besides which, bear in mind that a
non-trivial number of the world's taxonomists do not or did not
organize their classifications using phylogenetic principles, so the
*only* evidence we have of their hypotheses of relationships are
their names.

I guess I'm arguing that overloading the names with meaning (i.e., expectingthem to tell us something about relationships) is the root cause of much (most?)synonymy, which in turn makes taxonomy difficult to use. Is it not time torethink this practice?

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK